I didn’t get a chance to write last week and almost didn’t make it for this week, but in the light of the fact that apparently there are some Extended PTQs happening this weekend, I felt waiting wasn’t a good idea.
These early PTQs will likely set the tone for the upcoming season much more so than the Extended portion of Worlds, even though the results from these PTQs will be completely based on said Worlds results. I think there are basically only three decks to play, if you aren’t holding out on some SST (super secret tech) that’s actually good – instead of, say, just thinking it’s good). Boros and TEPS are the big two, and Nassif’s deck – well, I’ll attribute it to him, but clearly he didn’t invent it – is a third popular, and likely successful, choice.
Boros and TEPS both share something in common, being that they play their own game against most of the field; you can pretty much ignore them. With TEPS you are literally doing this, and with Boros half of your cards are non-interactive and the other half only have to interact once or twice to get their job done… so yes, it’s a theme shared by both of these decks, and perhaps a reason why these decks will be so successful in the field.
Both of these decks are “fast.” Ideally you’re winning before your opponent has set up, and that’s quite appealing. However, each error you make is potentially very costly, as you can imagine. Each damage missed is potentially, literally, an extra turn for them to recover, find some life-gain, combo-kill you, whatever. In a format like Extended – where turns are valuable and difficult to come by, and where cards are super-powerful – giving someone extra time can easily be the difference between a 3-3 record at a PTQ and scoring an easy 6-0-2 Top 8 berth.
Compare this to, say, a deck like mono-Blue control from… well, whenever; it doesn’t actually matter. On the second turn I have two Islands in play, untapped. My hand could be seven more Islands, or it could contain cards ranging from Memory Lapse to Counterspell. Now imagine you’re casting a spell because you’re playing some beatdown deck. Your hand had three one-drops in it, and a two-drop. Of course, on turn 1 you played a guy, that was easy… but what do you do here? Do you cast a one-drop, expecting it to be countered? Followed by another? Do you play your two-drop into their Remand? They’re making you ask a lot of questions. I’m not going to speculate or discuss the right play, because that is not at all the point. The point is you are allowing your opponent to make a possible mistake. With Boros, you can’t force the same kind of mistakes. You can force other mistakes, but in reality, if your opponent is cautious – and assumes you can kill them when you can – they will make the plays that give them the best chance of winning, naturally. You are attacking something very near and dear to them: their life total. They’ll want to protect it.
TEPS, on the other hand, is different. They can’t react at all without Blue cards, and playing Blue cards at the wrong time can actually help them. Jelger told me one of his opponents at Worlds Condescended his turn 3 Burning Wish for three (tapping out.) The end result of this was an increased Storm count, which enabled Jelger to break his remaining Invasion-sac land, cast a series of Rituals and Songs, finally casting Burning Wish for Tendrils of Agony to kill his opponent for exactly twenty… and I don’t think things like that are terribly uncommon, either.
TEPS is a very explosive deck. I’m sure you’ve all seen decklists, I included two variations in my previous article. It’s a difficult deck to disrupt without well-played Blue cards, such as the aforementioned countermagic in the format. Applying a fast clock backed by Pyrostatic Pillar is an excellent strategy, and will prove successful as there is really no good way around it. They might have three Chain of Vapors in their deck after boarding, but Blue mana is very valuable to them, as is the two life it’ll cost them to lift the Pillar in the first place… and that’s assuming they’ve got the Chain in their hand. If they don’t? Well, you can bet you’ve stunted their development or increased your likelihood of winning (the extra damage from the Pillar means less work for your other cards, after all). Now with TEPS, what can your opponent do? They can play their best game and try to kill you as fast as possible. They can play their best game and try to countermagic you as best as possible, but in reality the game hinges on whether or not you can win – not whether or not they can prevent you. Although perhaps Chris Pikula Meddling Mage can show them a thing or two…
Capping off Nassif’s 11-0-1 swiss run in the Constructed portions of Worlds, he ran this:
Creatures (14)
Lands (23)
Spells (23)
This deck is an answer deck. It’s all answers. You play Kird Ape, I play Silver Knight. You play Ichorid, I Trinket Mage for Tormod’s Crypt. You play nothing? I lock you out with Counterbalance and Sensei’s Divining Top.
I am inclined to dislike this deck. It’s somehow very Rock-like (in that, I mean it’s good against everything… and therefore bad against everything). However, Counterbalance and Top are absolutely ridiculous when together, and they are a pretty clear indicator of what happens when you don’t test cards together. It dominated Standard when it was legal, and it’s still quite good in Extended, so… anyway. This deck has lots of good cards; almost all of them. The bullets aren’t that good, but Trinket Mage is a limiting factor you can live with, and you’ll be glad to have them. At least most of them are very inexpensive.
Against Boros you have Lightning Helix and Exalted Angel, as well as Silver Knight and Fire / Ice for backup, which makes their job very difficult. It’s unlikely that a morphed Exalted Angel will ever live, save you having seven mana – but an unmorphed Angel is a Time Walk and an Inspiration, or it’s the end of your opponent’s hopes and dreams.
Against TEPS you have Meddling Mages and a soft lock of Counterbalance and Sensei’s Divining Top, as well as enough cheap creatures to actually apply some pressure. In game 2 you have Dwarven Blastminer to really hammer it home. Against the rest, you have… the rest. Various, it varies, lots of ins and outs, and what-have-yous.
It’s an answer deck. I don’t like it. Kibler used to say you should never play an answer – “control” deck unless it is the very best deck. He WoWs now, but look at the top Extended decks: Boros, Goblins, English three-Color beatdown (Destructive Flow), Ichorid, Nassif, Combo, Tron… you can see that Mori’s Tog was the best non-Tron, and he was a lock at 4-1-1 (obviously), so I’m not sure if he could have done better, or worse, or what… but just one Tron deck succeeded when all others failed, and just Nassif, playing anything but an ordinary control deck. Control isn’t so hot in Extended.
Okay, three decks and you’re looking for a recommendation.
I recommend you practice. Hopefully you heard this somewhere else, and you have already practiced. If you’re confident in Boros or Storm then go forth and be successful. If you’re not and you want to play them, don’t be surprised by failure, but don’t be discouraged either. PTQs later in the season are both easier and harder, so losing in the first week is not the end of the world; once the metagame is more defined – as it will be later in the season – the easier it becomes to “break.” Deck choice and card choices are both important in doing that, but if I were playing in a PTQ I’d play Boros.
When you play Boros, you have a few choices about how to build your deck…
How many protection from red creatures do you want maindeck? I’d play 8. Green or no? I’d play Green. The mirror is a highly anticipatable part of the metagame, and I’d want to take advantage of my opponent’s deck-choice as best I could. That probably means being able to “out-pro-Red” them; Kird Ape and Armadillo Cloak out of the board go further in this direction, though Kird Ape is just an excellent creature and allows you to dominate their one-drops – it also trades with Goblin Legionnaire (3 mana for them, to your one) should they still be playing it, though I feel it has been outmoded.
A good example of how this deck might look would be Wessel’s Deck from Worlds:
Creatures (22)
Lands (22)
Spells (16)
Sideboard
Complete with miser’s Worship in the board.
I think this deck might have one too many lands, but there’s not one particular land I don’t like, and you can’t skimp on the Forests. If you did cut a land I’d add one Lava Dart, without hesitation.
The sideboard has all cards that I like – with eight Protection from Red two-drops, your Umezawa’s Jittes will actually do something nearly every time you draw one, and you all remember how hard it is to recover from Jitte beatings. Pyrostatic Pillar, of course… don’t leave home without these if you are playing, no matter what your deck looks like. If it’s Boros, play these.
I’d feel good playing this deck at a PTQ, and I think it’s fully capable of winning the tournament, including beating an experienced TEPS player in the finals, though I’d hope he lost in the semis (manascrew.)
But I’m not. I’m not playing in a PTQ. In fact, besides a few early PTQs for Geneva, which were more practice for the draft Pro Tour, I haven’t played in any PTQs in quite a while. I didn’t play in PTQs at Worlds.
Yes, friends, fans (and enemies…), I am done. There’s nothing left for me in Magic. Around the time of Pro Tour: Houston a few of my friends (Gerard, Osyp, etc…) threatened to quit, and I remember telling them, just as I’ve told anyone, that they should simply stop playing when it’s no longer fun for them. Of course, those guys didn’t quit. There are some that believe that the game might quit you, instead of vise-versa. Sure, that might be true too, but it’s truly been a drag these past few events, and it’s time for me to move on.
I’ve played Magic longer than most people. I started late (Mirage was being released the first time I went to the local shop, but in reality it was fourth grade, or about twelve years ago). I’ve cast Force of Will in a Standard tournament; I don’t think a lot of people can say that.
Craig said that maybe recounting some highs and lows was the way to go, so let’s see… The lows? Well, in a span of a month I completely blew it in the semis of two different PTQs in two different formats. To give you some idea, I had Sword of Fire and Ice and Loxodon Warhammer in play, in a Limited game… and lost.
Then I made it to the Pro Tour, and proceeded to do rather badly, until the end of last year when I was really playing well and having fun. I played a lot of Magic Online and won a lot. I made Top 8 of U.S. Nationals when it still had real prizes to attract real players, and Top 16 of Worlds a few months later.
This year, one of the lowest lows was playing a fake-feature match against Paul Rietzl, at a Grand Prix in a place where the weather was ridiculously warm. I guess it was Arizona; wherever it was, it was terrible (sorry Arizona).
It was game 3, and neither of our decks were particularly good, though Paul has always been falsely modest – something I hate. His deck was better than mine, and better than he gave it credit for, but nevertheless… I should have won. I don’t remember all the details now, except that I remember exactly thinking I needed to chump block with my Burning-Tree Shaman the first time he attacked with his 6/6 graft creature in order to win the race with my remaining Surveilling Sprite (he was at three or four life). I thought all of this, and then failed to continue to actually make the play. I lost by a turn. Something completely avoidable, had I just made the play; I went to the bathroom to wash up after the match, and I (for the first time, at the time) remembered how I thought of this play and had failed to make it. That’s pretty bad. It’s really bad. It stung, too. I also 0-4ed the draft Pro Tour this year; a first of any PT I’ve ever played. Even in my very first individual PT, among all the pressure and ill-preparation, I managed to beat Eivind Nitter, but this one I even lost at the 0-3 table. Sick beats.
As for the highs… the highs in Magic aren’t really about Magic. Maybe if I had won a PT, it’d be different. But Heezy was broke two months later, and too foolish to go to a Japanese Grand Prix to hit Level 6. I have a feeling the friends and dinners, late nights when the gaming is done and the stories are shared, a million different people and a million different cities… those are the real prizes.
And I got to give a little back.
Thanks for reading and good luck to you all, but I won’t see you next week.